*Blockades on the M18. Photograph: Joe Buckley
ORGANISERS of the fuel protests which brought parts of Clare to a standstill for a week during the middle of April are planning to bring back the blockades if emergency reductions on fuel excise are not extended.
Within the next week, the Government is due to decide on whether to extend cuts in excise duty on petrol, diesel and marked gas oil. The cuts are due to expire on July 31st and were introduced in response to the widespread blockades
If the cuts are lifted, the cost of diesel will spike by 32c per litre which is putting the Government under pressure to extend the measures.
Owner of C&C Executive Travel, Cathal O’Donoghue a leading figure in Clare during the April blockades informed members of the local protest group that meetings will be held across the country over the next two weeks to determine if protests will resume, “Here we go again by the looks of it, if the Government don’t cop on”.
He said, “Everybody is going to get stung with this 32c rise, the fuel prices have come down, oil has come down to $78 a barrel and the fuel is still climbing so who is making money out of it only the Government. Protests are going to hit harder if the Government don’t cop the fuck on and take away this carbon tax”.
Mid-July would be the most likely time for the protests and blockades to begin according to the Ballynacally man. “It looks like the country is going to have lock it down again from the middle of July, we’re not sure yet but meetings will have to be held in the next couple of weeks”.
Protests if they return will be bigger and have more support, O’Donoghue claimed. “We need to hit this hard if they don’t take away the Carbon Tax, we did it before but we need to get everybody out this time if the Government don’t listen and take away the Carbon Tax, this needs to lock the country down and I think the whole country will do it and back it”.
Matters are “coming to a head again,” Cathal cautioned. “No one seems to have got anything from the last protest, they got no money off them, we certainly didn’t get anything yet”. He added, “This Government didn’t listen to us the first time, they took a few cents off here and there but it has all gone back on”.
Speaking on Tuesday, Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers (FF) stressed that the coalition did not want to see a sharp increase in fuel prices and that a decision on the fuel relief would be made within ten days. “We don’t want to see is a big upward increase in energy prices or in oil prices which has an impact on consumers or on businesses. It’s in that context which we’ll assess the decision on a further extension, and we want to see a more smooth path of energy prices over the next number of months”.
Hundreds of EU meetings will be held as Ireland hosts the Presidency of the Council of European Union with State leaders visiting the country from next week. The potential of protests during the Presidency has Government officials on alert.
Threatening protests during this time is “wrong”, Minister Chambers said. “No protesters should seek to threaten or undermine critical infrastructure across the state,” he stated. “We’ll take an informed view of price dynamics on the basis of our wider engagement with stakeholders, but hreat of disruption is wrong, and again people need to respect the wider apparatus of the state, and we’ll make decisions on this in the next ten days”.
Over 1000 people took to the streets of Ennis for a protest in April over the escalating price of fuel while public opinion was mixed on the manner in which blockades were mounted on the M18 leading to traffic chaos countywide.
